Plumber? How to ditch the paperwork in less than 5 minutes

Subscribe to my YouTube Channel for regular videos empowering small business owners

View the Channel

Transcript

Hey, I’m Hazel, I’m a ServiceM8 expert and I have 10 years’ experience running a plumbing and heating business here in the UK.

Thanks for taking the time today to check out this quick video of me showing you exactly how you can ditch your plumbing paperwork in less than five minutes. So in the time it takes you to make a cup of Yorkshire tea, you can have your own online job management system, and your first job all set up booked in and invoiced.

You might be wondering why I’m creating this video. The reason is, I know that a lot of business owners just don’t know where to start when it comes to setting up their systems and working online. Getting your ServiceM8  account up and running is the first step to creating an efficient, profitable business that doesn’t rely on bits of paper, or keeping stuff in your head to make it work. I absolutely think that online is the way to go. Because it’s easy to set up. It’s cheap, you don’t have anything to lose. Plus, it’s a great way to keep on top of all of your admin without having to spend hours and hours in the evenings and over the weekend getting it done.

Now, it’s worth mentioning that you’re not going to understand the full power of service mate and have a fully automated efficient system in five minutes – you’re going to have to spend a little more time understanding how to get the most out of it once you’ve set it up. But there are ServiceM8 partners like me who can support you and do some of the legwork for you. For a lot of people, the hardest thing is just knowing which software to choose and how to get started. So I’m going to show you exactly how you can do that.

Now in less than five minutes, I’m going to show you how to:

• create your account
• create your first job
• get it booked into the calendar
• add some pricing
• send your first invoice.

So I’m ready to get started if you are. So let’s do this. I apologise if I’m going a little too fast. But I want to try and show you just how quickly it can be done. For your convenience I’ve outlined the information below as a step-by-step guide so that you know exactly what to do. And you can go at your own pace.

I’ve got a stopwatch here, so that you can see that I’m not cheating or playing around with the video editing. So here it is set up at five minutes, I’m going to pull up my website, specifically my blog. And I’m going to use the ServiceM8 link on the right hand sidebar to start.

So let’s go. We’re going to hit the link. And it’s going to take us to a signup form. This is some test information I had in previously. So you would just type in your first and last name. And I’m going to call my business the speedy plumber. So you just add all of your own details and create a password you don’t need any card details, you want to tick this box because then you will get a free 15-minute call with me to ask me any questions and we’ll hit the start 14 day trial.

So you’re going to want to save your password while you’re at it. And then it’ll take about a minute to set it up. So we’re going to jump back in in a minute’s time, you’ll see the timer will update – I’m not cheating. Jump back in and I’ll take you through the next steps. And we’re in so you can see that we’ve got about three minutes remaining. So the next thing we’re going to do is type in the company details. You’ll add your details, it’ll add the contact details that you’ve already put in, we’re going to add the address and you want to add your full address primary industry in a click plumbing and number of staff two, three, then hit next.

Go and select your company logo and hit next – region language and timezone are all correct. So hit Next. I’m going to pick no accounting package for now and terms of seven days with card or cash payments, and hit Finish.

Now you’ve got a video that you can watch or you can wait a couple of seconds for it to finish setting up the account and then click the link. We still got a couple of minutes left. So it’s create a sample job for us to look at. But we are going to set up our first new job. Now let’s say we’ve got a customer Sandra Smith – start typing her name in. Then we type in her address and it’ll look through and suggest the addresses. Then we’re going to say what needs to happen (what the problem is), and then we’re going to add in her contact details correctly.

She wants us to actually do the work. So we’re gonna make it a work order and hit save. Now to bring it into the calendar, it’s as simple as clicking it and dragging it from the right-hand side, and we’re going to drop it in for three o’clock appointment.

ServiceM8 will then prompt you to add your phone number and it’ll send a text message to your phone to invite you to download the iPhone app. So we’ll do that.

Then let’s say we’ve done the job. We want to add some pricing to add labour. Let’s say our labour is £70 an hour, and we were there for an hour. Then maybe we want to add the part. So add the part here supplied with a new tap £50. It does the maths for you, you hit the produce Invoice button that will produce the invoice from a ready-made template for you. These can all be edited. And again, there’s an email template that’s all ready to go for you that you can customise in the future. You hit send, close that down, change the job to be completed.

And there you have it, you’re done. So a ServiceM8 plan starts at just £8 a month total. That’s not per user. So you can add as many staff to this as you like without paying extra which is awesome.

In five minutes, I’ve shown you how to set up a ServiceM8 account, I’ve created my first job, I’ve booked an appointment, I’ve added some pricing, and I’ve produced and sent my first invoice.

Now bear in mind, it’ll take you a little longer, but I want you to get it right. But if you were scared about the process before, then hopefully you aren’t now because you can see that there’s no complicated stuff involved. There are no extra systems that you need to get your head around and you always have the support team or ServiceM8 Partners around to give you a hand.

There’s also a learning roadmap that you can follow. If you click up here and then click on Learning Roadmap.

So if you had any reservations about ditching your paper diary or printed job sheets, you have no excuses anymore, you can see just how easy it is to get started.

Sign up for a free ServiceM8 trial and 15% off for 6 months here.